Angel Cordero claims he got to Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight before animated neighbor Charles Ramsey.
Charles Ramsey has become the unofficial hero of the story of the three kidnapped women rescued in Ohio Monday.
But now a neighbor is claiming he got there first.
"I helped her and I was first," Angel Cordero said, according to the International Business Times.
Cordero, speaking via a translator because he speaks Spanish, claimed he kicked down the door and freed Amanda Berry and that she spoke to him before Ramsey, the Times reported.
On CNN, Cordero said, "She (Berry) had told me that (she) had been kidnapped for 10 years. So I kicked the door at the bottom … and that's when Amanda ran out of the house."
He’s now being touted as the unsung hero who freed the three women who’d been missing for about a decade. The women – Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight – were found Monday in the home of Ariel Castro, who know faces accusations of rape and kidnapping.
After the rescue, Ramsey's story of how he found the women went viral on the Internet.
"I heard screaming," he said. "I'm eating my McDonald's. I come outside. I see this girl going nuts trying to get out of a house."
McDonald's has since promised Ramsey they'll "be in touch" and a petition sprang up online to have Ramsey invited to the White House to eat McDonald's with President Barack Obama.
But Cordero, who says he is not jealous of Ramsey's fame, claims Ramsey arrived after him.
"Ramsey arrived after she was outside with the girl," Cordero said, according to the Times. "But the truth who arrived there, who crossed the street, who came and broke the door, it was me."
